Oral history interview with Camille Feinberg, 2000 June 27

Collection Summary: An interview of Camille Feinberg conducted 2000 June 27, by Paul Karlstrom, for the Archives of American Art, in the offices of the Archives of American Art, San Marino, Calif.

Another in the artists and models series, this interview with artist and performer in New York City for 18 years, Camille Feinberg focused on her activity in the late 1960s when she posed for a number of Los Angeles artists. She began her "career" when a student at Pasadena City College and then worked at the Pasadena Museum of Art and various private studios over a period of several years. Highlights of the interview include accounts of private sessions with Richard Diebenkorn, John Altoon, Richard Feynman, and Jirayr Zorthian. She also candidly discussed the generally unacknowledged erotic aspect of posing. Feinberg believes that the resultant tension creates an energy that contributes to the process of art making. For her, the studio was a place where people can safely act out personal fantasies. She described the range of studio behavior among artists: Diebenkorn was entirely respectful and professional while some of the others, notably Altoon, were less so. Above all, she remembers the experience as "relating to another human being."

Biographical/Historical Note: Camille Feingberg was an artist and performer of New York, N.Y.

This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
Funding for the transcription of this interview provided by Bente and Gerald E. Buck Collection.

Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.

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